Nursing director thinks she was target of California shooter

GARANCE BURKE and TERRY COLLINS

Published
12:00 am EDT, Thursday, April 5, 2012

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- An administrator at a small Christian university where seven people were killed this week said Wednesday she was the alleged gunman's primary intended target after she rejected his repeated requests for a refund of his tuition.

Ellen Cervellon, director of the nursing program at Oikos University, said she wasn't on campus Monday when her former student, One Goh, came looking for her then went on his rampage.

Two days later, in an interview with The Associated Press, a shaken Cervellon said the slayings are haunting her.

"I have that weight on my shoulders and I don't know what to do with it," she said, her voice quavering. "Every single one of those students were going to be an excellent, excellent nurse. They're in my heart, and they always will be."

Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan confirmed Cervellon was the apparent target. Officer Johnna Watson, a police spokeswoman, said later that police are looking into the possibility that other administrators had been targeted.

Goh, 43, was charged Wednesday with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, plus a special circumstance allegation of committing multiple murders that could make him eligible for the death penalty.

Shackled and showing little emotion, Goh said nothing during a brief court appearance other than a soft "yes" when the judge asked if he understood the charges. He did not enter a plea.

In a police affidavit, Officer Robert Trevino said Goh acknowledged going to Oikos on Monday with a .45-caliber handgun and four magazines of ammunition.

"He admitted to kidnapping a woman and forcing her from her office into a classroom at gunpoint," Trevino said in the statement. "He admitted to shooting and killing several people inside the classroom, before taking one of the victim's car keys and fleeing the scene in the victim's car."

Police arrested Goh about an hour after the shooting spree at a supermarket a few miles from campus.

A student wounded in the rampage said Goh burst into the classroom shouting and quickly began firing his weapon. Ahmad Sayeed was shot through the shoulder as he scrambled to get out with other panicked students.

The 36-year-old immigrant nursing student from Afghanistan said he did not understand what Goh was yelling, though he did hear him order students to line up in front of the classroom.

Sayeed said he has been this frightened once before -- when the Taliban attacked his high school in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

"The exact thing happened at my school," Sayeed said. "The Taliban came in and killed five students. I was very afraid then, too."

Cervellon said Goh dropped out of the nursing program at the tiny private school around November but returned numerous times to ask her for a full tuition refund.

Goh got angry when she told him the school could not refund all his money because he had been enrolled for nearly half of the program, she said. Cervellon said she did not know how much Goh had paid in tuition.

Police have said Goh was seeking a female administrator when he went to the campus Monday. When he was told she wasn't there, they said, he began shooting in classrooms, killing six students and a receptionist and wounding three others.

Jordan previously said Goh was angry after being expelled from the school, but Cervellon said he was never expelled and decided to leave on his own.

"He was never forced out, he showed no behavioral problems, and he was never asked to leave the program," she said. "He decided on his own to leave the program."

Police said they made contact with Cervellon after seeing the AP story. Jordan said investigators plan to interview her soon, and that many details were still unclear.

"We were told by witnesses that he was kicked out, but there could be some facts that he wasn't," Jordan said. "I do know that he was trying to get his down payment or tuition reimbursed."

During previous meetings with Cervellon, Goh also said he felt his classmates were picking on him at the school, which was founded to help Korean immigrants adjust to life in America and launch new careers, she said. Goh is a native of South Korean who became a U.S. citizen.

Jordan has said Goh also was upset because other students had teased him about his poor English skills.

However, Cervellon and nursing professor Romie John Delariman said they never heard about or witnessed Goh being ridiculed for problems with English. Delariman said Goh was a good student who didn't seem to struggle with his second language.

"He was a full-time student and was really motivated. If I taught something he would be the first person in line to do it," Delariman said.

Still, Goh appeared to be the aggressor in exchanges with others at the school, according to Efanye Chibuko, whose wife Doris Chibuko was among those killed in Monday's attack.

Chibuko said his wife, a native of Nigeria who was elected president of her nursing class, felt Goh was unstable.

"My wife was afraid of him," he told the AP. "She was afraid he would do something like he did. She knew the other victims, and they talked about it. They were afraid that he was going to come back and do what he did."

Chibuko said he's angry with school officials for not doing more to protect the students.

"They were all living in fear. My wife told me the guy had been violent toward the school staff and had kicked the walls and stuff like that," he said. "So they knew. They should have had security in place."

Delariman said he noticed that Goh had problems, in particular, dealing with women in his predominantly female nursing classes.

"He can't stand women," Delariman said. "He said he never used to work with women, or deal with women in a work setting or a school setting."

It's unclear how Goh earned a living before he became a nursing student at the school of about 100 students. His instructors and a former employer said he previously worked in construction.

Chong Sik Hwang, owner of C.H. Trading Co. in San Mateo, said he hired Goh as a deliveryman at the Asian grocery importing and distribution operation in 2009. Goh was fired a few months later after Hwang heard Goh had gotten into an argument with a customer.

After making an initial impression as "upbeat," Hwang said Goh turned out to be a "very stubborn" worker who didn't take direction well.

"He had to do it his way," Hwang said. "He was always right."

During the job interview, Hwang said Goh told him he had left a wife and 12-year-old daughter in Virginia. Goh was evicted from an apartment in Gloucester County, Va., in 2009 and left a string of debts behind, including back taxes owed to the federal government.

Hwang said Goh told him he ran a construction company on the East Coast but that the business had gone under.

Online records in two Virginia localities where he lived show that, while Goh was there, he racked up tens of thousands of dollars in liens and judgments, including a $10,377 debt to SunTrust Bank in 2006.

Burke reported from San Francisco and can be reached at http://twitter.com/garanceburke . Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Paul Elias and Marcus Wohlsen in San Francisco, Tracie Cone in Fresno, and Matthew Barakat in McClean, Va.

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